


codependence of desire

by t0talcha0s



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alluka's parents do misgender her but transphobia is not a driving force in this fic, Character Study, Pre-Canon, Typical Zoldyck Ennui, allusions to torture, an exploration of Alluka before and when she met Nanika, it's a tad fluffy near the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25210363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t0talcha0s/pseuds/t0talcha0s
Summary: The Zoldyck manor was very large, and everyone in it very powerful. But, the closer Alluka Looked, the more she found the Zoldycks were very very lonely.
Relationships: Nanika & Alluka Zoldyck
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	codependence of desire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neverwherever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverwherever/gifts).



> Dedicated to my roommate and constant hunter x hunter inspiration who wrote the sentence:
> 
> "Killua looked down at Kukuroo Mountain and thought, they are powerful and they are wealthy and they are very, very dangerous, but right now they are small and shut up in that cold and lonely house, and for a moment (but only a moment) he felt pity instead of fear" 
> 
> which definitely influenced the tone of this piece. You can (and should) read that fic here https://archiveofourown.org/works/23923663

The Zoldycks, in preparation for the birth of their fourth son, had been told: twins. Two boys, disappointed on both accounts. Birth is a bloody process. There is skin which separates from skin, there is muscle pulled out of muscles, tears and rips, and there is the inexcusable first offense of having the connection of biology severed. There was a unity, a bond of two, now split and abandoned. There is no way to remember a birth, but that first betrayal sits beneath the navel, a reminder of what oneness was shared. Alluka’s birth was without incident, it was Kikyo’s fourth and she was brought to her mother’s chest with love and held tightly as if the trespass could be so easily forgotten. Alluka cried, because of the unfamiliar intrusion of air into water-soaked lungs, because of the stinging cold that shared body heat could not overcome, because despite the familial presence, the eyes and voices of a mother and father, Alluka was born alone. 

The household was never empty but the long cool hallways of the manor still left opportunities for loneliness. Illumi and Milluki paid her no mind, Illumi too interested in the new freedoms of his tender teenage years and Milluki too desperate for attention to spare any for his youngest sibling. Her mother was pregnant again soon after her birth, another son, her father was pleased, but she was often taken by nasty bouts of morning sickness and her candy-sweet love was often unavailable to her growing daughter. So Alluka was left to play in the uninhabited spaces of rooms where her father and grandfather sat talking, her older brother of one year sat beside her. 

“He should make a fine assassin” Her grandfather appraised, watching as she tried to help Killua construct a house of blocks for their toy cars to live in. 

“Black hair.” Her father responded, Alluka brought a green block up to the top of the house, wavering on freshly-two-year-old legs. 

“Kikyo’s genes are strong.” 

“As long as he’s still a Zoldyck.” Alluka fell, bringing the house of blocks down with her. 

Alluka had Killua, most times. He had a tendency to wander off, explore the far reaches of their mountain home, skirting the attention of their butlers as he left Alluka to dig trenches of sand on her own. He desired freedom outside of a younger sister and a sandbox. Alluka got used to playing by herself. 

When Alluka turned three her training began. Poison was snuck into peanut butter and chocolate sandwiches, a scolding glance from her father when they were vomited up again _Illumi was taking triple this dosage at his age._ There were nights when her gentle sleep was interrupted, drawn blurry eyed and whining into the lower levels of the house _hold onto these bars dear and don’t let go, the pain is never too much to bear. Imagine the shocks away._ Alluka imagined stuffed animals beneath her fingertips, the red of her palms the result of hard candies on humid summer evenings, the clench of her jaw from a smile, her jaw hurt because she was happy, so happy her smile stung down to the roots. Her mother gently pat her back as the voltage was drawn upward and Alluka ripped her hands away. _try again, you can’t go back to bed until you take half an hour._ Alluka was led to the foot of the mountain, off of the main pathway deep into undergrowth and snake holes, told to make her way back to the house before sundown if she wanted dinner and a warm bed tonight. The sky above was gray with storm. She made it in time, shivering and stumbling in the last vestiges of evening light. Bathed in the low pinks of sunset she tugged the door open and found no one waiting for her. 

Her first kill was a cat. A black and white, spotted stray she and Killua would sneak treats to when they played on the playground. Their time together was less frequent now, Killua’s training took up more and more of his day, stretched deep into the night and woke him early in the morning. He was taking impact training today, Illumi and he tucked into a corner of the manor with a whip and fists and monotone words. Her father came into her room, the cat curled sleepily in his large arms. She jumped at the sight, believing her father had brought it as a gift. She’d always wanted a pet, someone to share the ghostly Zoldyck days. The words _Thank you!_ sat sweetly on her tongue and decayed there as her father spoke

“It’s ill.” he said “It needs to be put down.” 

“What?” 

“It’s rabid, it’ll hurt itself and others, you need to kill it son.” He set the cat in front of her, it meowed quietly in upset and tilted its head familiarly at her. She didn’t want to kill it. Her father tapped his foot impatiently. She was hesitating, _hesitation is when the idiocy of emotion battles truth_ her grandfather had said once at dinner, a cup of golden whiskey in his hand, _it is the cause of death for millions of people a year._ He had laughed, and so had her father. Now he looked at her with a bitter disappointment in his gaze. Or he didn’t, look at her, he looked straight through her as if he was the only one in the room. The cat died clawing pitifully at the underbelly of a teddy bear. Her father, once it quieted, nodded and left her alone with the corpse. 

The Zoldyck manor was large, very large, and there were long twisting passageways that held secrets and forgotten things. Alluka, now four years old and allowed to wander the grounds in her free time, made an effort to explore them. One day she found the abandoned quilting chambers of her great-grandmother, Zeno’s mother. It had a large blue and white and orange quilt stretched across a frame, a layer of dust graying the stitches. Alluka ran her fingers along the swirling patterns and noticed how her fingertips sprinkled a layer of silver-winged dust when she picked them up. The room was so still she couldn’t imagine a person having been there in hundreds of years, it felt like a piece of history, even though the needle was still half pressed through the fabric, forgotten mid-stitch so long ago. She wondered what interrupted its rhythm, took it between her thumb and pointer finger and pulled. She left it dangling from the thread, swinging above the floor. She assumed it would be forever suspended, untouched in its breezeless dance. 

She found a dumbwaiter, an interior chimney that stretched up the floors of the home and Alluka could not remember what room stood above it. The dumbwaiter was broken. As she stuck her head up into the passage and stared upwards she saw its wooden bottom. She’d have to find where it connected naturally. It would take her years to explore every floor of the house, she wondered how old she’d be when she found it. If she’d have shrunk as small as her grandmother, or be hunched and zany like her grandfather. 

She found a room with a large pane of glass separating it into two halves. Alluka pressed her face close to it and stared. The glass was cloudy and must not have been cleaned in years and years, decades even. There was nothing to see, just empty concrete floors and nebulous shadows. There was a slight smell in the room, an old smell cut through with the smell of fresh-picked mushrooms. She stood there, watching the shadows glint and slide despite the stable light source. As she sat in the room, alone and quiet, enveloped in the scents of decay, she felt, more so than usual, very very lonely. She wondered if she sat there and held her breath how long it would take someone to find her, to want to find her? She sat on her heels and stared through the glass. Would her brothers look for her? Illumi cared little for her, he was out on his own finding success in his career and personality, Milluki almost never strayed from his room, holed up at his computer leaving only to replenish his snack piles, Killua was training, their father forcing him into harder and more extensive schedules, soon he would be six and, as is tradition, leave for the city to get “real combat experience”, and Kalluto never strayed from their mother’s side. And her parents, they must love her, their child. Her mother was often preoccupied with her siblings, she doted on Killua and Kalluto constantly, and she still sometimes worked. Her father was stern and distant, he spoke to her only when he had an assignment for her, some new training, and he and his father left the house more often than anyone else. Alluka knew she could go at least a day without water, but didn’t know if anyone would care to find her after that day. Perhaps they’d sit around and wonder “when did I last see Alluka” and maybe they’d care. 

Alluka, eventually, fell asleep. She curled on the frigid concrete floor and stared into the other half of the room with somehow unending curiosity. And then she was asleep. She dreamt of a wide, black space. It was comforting, shadowy and warm. It was as though she were wrapped in a blanket, something fuzzy that she peaked only her head out of. As she moved through the space her shoes made the sound of feet on carpet, a soft swishing. It made her want to dance. None of the Zoldyck manor was carpeted and the few rooms which had rugs were not ones Alluka spent a lot of time in. So she drifted about the space, swishing her shoes on the carpet and kicking her legs out. When she laughed it didn’t echo. There were two points of light, high above her, that filtered in silver-dust beams through the ill defined walls of the space, two beautiful spotlights in the void. And she noticed now, or she didn’t notice, she just innately knew, Someone was there. Alluka wasn’t alone. 

Sat against the side of the space was a silhouette of a girl, the same height as her. Her hair was as long and she seemed to wear the same pants and sweatshirt as Alluka did and when Alluka reached her hand out to her she took it and her palms were warm and dry. They danced the two of them, laughing together and tumbling down onto the soft floor. Nothing here hurt. It was Alluka and with her, she knew the name suddenly, as if the other girl had always been with her, and she and Nanika danced and hugged and played the two of them. Nanika climbed up up to those holes of light and peered out them, smiling at the world, at the stains on the glass, and suddenly Alluka woke up. Or no, suddenly the two of them woke up.

They got up off the floor, chuckled and shook out the nap-pain from their limbs, and walked out into the hallway. It looked different, as though they were looking at the world through binoculars, everything was very very far away. But in here it was warm and it was soft and Alluka was no longer alone. The two of them climbed the steps up to the first floor of the house, and stepped out the front door. Although they were still on Zoldyck property, and they knew this, and they knew that the cold, lonely emptiness of this big plot of land would be harder to shrug off, as they looked up at the swirling white clouds on the bright blue sky and the blinding orange of the sun made them squint and giggle Alluka and Nanika knew they would never be so lonely and so trapped as before.

**Author's Note:**

> Ya'll love Alluka? I love Alluka. Please leave a comment if you liked it and if you're into that sort of thing my twitter is @poetforprofit.


End file.
